During
the attack on Gaza, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) passed resolution number "Symbol"A/HRC/S-9/L.1[1]
which condemned Israeli aggressions and called on the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights to report on alleged war crimes which
occurred during the Israeli attack. On 3 April 2009, the HRC established an
international independent Fact Finding Mission with the mandate “to
investigate all violations of international human rights law and international
humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of
the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27
December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”[2]

On 29th September 2009, the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza
Conflict, composed of South African Judge Richard Goldstone and his 3 person
team, submitted its report to the Human Rights Council (12th
session). The “Goldstone Report” entitled Human Rights in Palestine and Other
Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on
the Gaza Conflict[3]
confirmed that both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups had committed
grave violations of international law, including war crimes and possible crimes
against humanity.

The Goldstone Report documented Israel's attacks on UN facilities, mosques and
schools and the use of Palestinians as human shields. It also gave details of
particularly horrific incidents, such as one in the Zeitoun district of Gaza in
which Israeli soldiers gathered over a hundred members of the Samouni family
into one house before opening fire with rockets and artillery shells, killing 29
members of the family and injuring dozens more. Alongside the documentation of
killings, the report also verified reports of the wanton Israeli destruction of
civilian infrastructure and private property in Gaza including the razing of a
chicken farm and 31,000 chickens and the destruction of one of the raw sewage
lagoons of the Gaza Waste Water Treatment plant, leading to the outflow of
200,000 cubic meters of raw sewage onto the neighboring farmland.

The Goldstone found that, in the lead up to the
Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to
collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive
isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the military operation,
houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public
buildings were destroyed, with families, including the elderly and children,
left living amid the rubble of their former dwellings long after the attacks
ended, as no reconstruction has been possible due to the continuing blockade.
Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the
population of Gaza. The Gaza military operations were directed by Israel at the
people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at
punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate
force aimed at the civilian population.